Lasagna filling

[Jenise]

When I was a teenager, I read about a magical family dinner involving lasagna and realized I'd never had the dish. Since my mother's death left me in charge of the kitchen, I set about making this dish myself and used the first recipe I found for it. Chances are real good that it came out of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, a durable do-all of American cooking that covers a lot of the basics for the basic home cook. Need a pot roast recipe? Pumpkin pie? Chicken soup? You know before you open the covers it will be in there.

Anyway, I had a bunch of packages to wrap and send today, and I flipped on the food network to entertain me while I cut and taped. Paula Deen was on, and she made a lasagna with a cottage cheese filling.

I'd forgotten all about that. That's what I used in that very first lasagna. And I'm sure the recipe prescribed it either alone or as an alternative to ricotta, which I had never laid eyes on, so I went with the familiar. Or the available, which was just as probable a limitation in Richard M. Nixon's and my home town.

Such is my food memory that I can't remember a thing about the sauce, but I remember thinking "euwww" when I mixed the eggs and the cheese, which was after all a member of that cold, white and creamy family that I've always found repulsive, and when it was cooked I was surprised that I liked it. In fact, I liked it a lot. But another decade went by before I made lasagna again, and by the time I was ready to tackle it anew I had grown up and become dedicated to at least striving for ethnic accuracy and I've used ricotta ever since.

But if cottage cheese were to cross my path, it would not only be welcome, it would probably be a very welcome taste and texture. In fact, as I combine the taste memories in my mind right now, I can see where I'd like it as well as, or maybe even better than, ricotta! I liked the nubbiness, for one.

Does anyone else use cottage cheese? To an Italian, would this substitution be sacrilege?

Jenise, I've never made it with cottage cheese, but interestingly, on the site I went to for the lasagna recipe I ended up with for our dinner party last week it seemed most of the lasagna recipes called for cottage cheese.
My former mother-in-law always made a pasta, red sauce "casserole" that involved cottage cheese. It was excellent. Sort of like a John Marzetti.
To me, ricotta and cottage cheese are so similar that it would be tough to tell the difference when cooked with egg -- apart from the "nubs."

%^)

When Kathleen and I were first married, we sorta couldn't afford the "real" stuff ... that and Kathleen's childhood was sorta on the poor side and cottage cheese was just simply cheaper and always in the fridge ... sometime in the late 80's, Kathleen "converted" to the "real thing" and we've been there ever since ... but I also remember a couple times something about company arriving at the front door unannounced and Kathleen whipping up a lasagna with, yep, cottage cheese because "it's always in the fridge" ... personally - I like it better for the same reason you do - "NUBS !"

BTW - Kathleen's favorite breakfast is eggs and cottage cheese !

Clink !

%^)

I've always used ricotta, but after all, ricotta is just an Italian version of cottage cheese, so I say yes to allowing the substitution.

Now you've gone and reminded me how long it's been since I made lasagna. It's got to go on the list of things to make once the new oven gets installed. My current one's burned out and I'm making do with stir-fried, boiled, steamed, grilled, and smoked foods. I'll survive somehow, I guess.

-Paul W.

Does anyone else use cottage cheese? To an Italian, would this substitution be sacrilege?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!!!!

I adore cottage cheese and even have a golden calf made out of the large curd style next to my other Lares in the foyer of my townhouse, but ...

<center>cottage cheese ain't ricotta!!!</center>

Naturally, this is pure prejudice and bad upbringing on my part, but I was raised using ricotta for certain things, such as lasagne, and cottage cheese for others, such as thigh diameter maintenance and cellulite prevention. If you asked anyone in my family whether they would make lasagne with cottage cheese, you would probably be on the receiving end of the malocchio or even worse!! (They might ask you to babysit.)

Seriously, ricotta is the only cheese that comes in question for me personally for lasagne, i.e. 2 lb. whole milk ricotta, 1/2 lb. diced whole milk mozzarella, 1 cup grated parmesan or romano or both, a handful of chopped fresh Italian parsley, 1 large egg, salt to taste, and pepper to taste. When I want my maternal ancestors to turn over in their graves in unison, I grate in some fresh nutmeg ... but only when I'm feelin' frisky.

So, for me and probably any other Barlettano in this cosmos, it is indeed a sacrilege to use cottage cheese instead of ricotta in this instance. I've tried it on my own and made by others. If I had a sister, I'd enjoy kissing her more. But, but, but ... that's why God made chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and Neapolitan ... tastes are different and "good" is a relative term.

Well, I also like it also with neither of the two!
I mean just using a sauce made of bolognese sauce with white sauce alternated to lasagna sheets (and Parmesan of course). Nice!!!

Ricotta here - and not just any ricotta, but the richest, full fat version I can find.

[Robin Garr]

Ricotta here - and not just any ricotta, but the richest, full fat version I can find.

I've got to agree. I try really hard not to be a food snob, and I do like cottage cheese. But in lasagna - or at least in Italian-American lasagna, as opposed to Marcella's Bolognese version with <i>besciamella</i> - cottage cheese just seems wrong.

Jenise,

I am also Italian American (albeit, 3rd generation) but, like Gary, I could never imagine anyone in my family using cottage cheese for their lasagne. It would most certainly be sacrilege! I have tried lasagne made with cottage cheese and it always reminds me of a Weight Watchers meal LOL!

My family recipe is similar to Gary's. One of my Aunties omits the egg in the ricotta cheese mixture which makes a more creamy, almost bechalmel or vodka sauce consistency, which I love and now I always omit the egg myself. But I would always use the whole milk ricotta, never cottage cheese.

How you ever had lasagne at a restaurant?

Lasagna is one of the two Italian dishes that I just will not get at most restaurants (risotto being the other). It's never done properly and always seems to be a bad combo of overcooked and dried out.

There must be some hidden Italian gene in me- I am 100% with Gary, John, and Maria (btw, Maria, great descriptor, Weight Watchers!), I would never use cottage cheese. Whole milk ricotta.

Stuart, I'm curious about your mention of not ordering risotto in restaurants. I've stopped also. It's never cooked enough. In fact, at Bin 36 in Chicago, I was told by the server to order the risotto, because it would be "the best I'd ever have." It was the worst. It was crunchy and runny at the same time. Solid and liquid elements never married.

Stuart, I'm curious about your mention of not ordering risotto in restaurants. I've stopped also. It's never cooked enough. In fact, at Bin 36 in Chicago, I was told by the server to order the risotto, because it would be "the best I'd ever have." It was the worst. It was crunchy and runny at the same time. Solid and liquid elements never married.

That's because restaurant cookery of risotto has to make concessions to the constraints of time - most diners don't want to wait half an hour for their meal to come up.

So they par cook it in the afternoon, cool it on sheet pans, then finish it a minute by adding one or two ladles of hot stock to bring it up to serving temp, and, in theory, finish the cooking. They almost always get it wrong. Those that get it right are few, and far between. Risotto is too much of a crapshoot when eating out - I never order it.

Bingo.

How you ever had lasagne at a restaurant?

Nope! I rarely eat Italian-American staples in most Italian-American or Italian restaurants. I used to enjoy the fare at the Casa Dante on Newark Avenue in Jersey City and then there was Rita and Joe's on Broadway in that same neck of the woods. And, of course, in most areas of New Jersey (and sometimes NYC) decent eggplant parm sandwiches and Italian hot dogs are to be found. But, in general, most anywhere I go in the states they serve up the pasta with thin red water still floating in the bottom of the bowl. The eggplant and chicken for parm have not be breaded and fried before layering. The meatballs are like golfballs. Now, soups I often eat in Italian-American restaurants. Minestrone is like a Sabrett's hot dog, if it lies around in the pot for a couple of days, it tastes better ... and "aged" minestrone is what I often find. And it's hard to mess up escarole and beans.

Now, I do eat things that are not staples in Italian-American restaurants and much borders on foo-foo food and is good. Saltimbocca or lamb on a bed of polenta, roasted Italian vegetables, calzone, stromboli, I eat that stuff out.

In this neck of the woods in Pleasant Hill, there's a placed called Cafe Milano which makes "decent," Italian-styled meals. It's a weird place because it's owned and run by Persians and the cooks are Mexican. Another place I'd recommend out here is Grissini's in the Hilton in Concord. Again, Italian-styled, good cookin' (but not what I call Italian-American).

How did I get off on that tangent???

I don't have too many food rules (no, really!), but full fat ricotta in my lasagna is one of them. One of the cooks at my workplace makes it with cottage cheese. No. No. A thousand times no!

And another vote that cottage cheese in lasagna is sacrilege. I've never had it, so I can't say whether it would be bad or not. And I would probably eat it if someone served it to me. And I suppose it's conceivable I might even like it.

BUT IT'S STILL A SACRILEGE!


And on risotto, I generally don't order it because it's one dish that I can guarantee I make as well or better than most restaurants. The only exception to this rule is a local restaurant (Mulvaney's) where I had a fig risotto that blew my mind.